


Lights

by Lapsed_Scholar



Series: Family Stories [5]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Family, Hanukkah, holiday feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 00:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16902327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapsed_Scholar/pseuds/Lapsed_Scholar
Summary: Fox Mulder and the December holidays, 1976-2011(This story is part of a larger alternate universe, but that series itself is a very loose collection. I strive for internal consistency, but reading one doesn't require reading the others.)





	Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays, everyone!

As the patrician son of a Jewish mother and an ostensibly-Protestant-but-actually-atheist father, Fox Mulder was raised with the requisite irreligious cultural Protestantism. From his earliest memories until 1973 his family was a wholesomely active participant in the common American culture—or, at least, the aristocratic approximation thereof. From 1973 the cultural observances continued for a time as a grotesque charade (though Fox tried very hard for a very long time to make it up to his parents, losing Samantha, his efforts never did seem to be enough). When his parents finally divorced, Fox’s preeminent emotion was relief that they were finally giving up part of the pretense.

But his scrupulously American upbringing means that he does observe Christmas in its nonreligious incarnation. Presents and trees and wreaths. _A Christmas Carol_ and the Grinch. Goodwill to men and eggnog. Holly and mistletoe, snow and sledding. He can sing all the popular Christmas carols.

In 1976 his parents agreed to interrupt this carefully respectable socialization to send him to spend Christmas Recess with his grandparents in New York. Just barely fifteen, Fox had grown increasingly withdrawn and melancholy, was almost antisocial, and had developed some unsuitable eccentricities. He was effortlessly brilliant, but his teachers worried about his dedication to applying himself. About these concerns his mother fretted to his grandparents, and they suggested that a change of scene might have a salutary effect. Fox did tend to do a little bit better after spending a week in the summer with them in Southampton, and so the plans for his break were set.

Those two weeks in 1976 remain, for thirty-five years, the only time he ever participated in a Hanukkah celebration.

When he arrived on Saturday afternoon, his grandmother greeted him at the door, hugged him and fussed over him and sent him with his suitcases to stay in the guest bedroom. His grandmother was always hugging him—one of the few people in his life who still did—and though he mostly considered himself too old for that much hugging, certain allowances were to be made for grandmothers.

His grandfather tried to engage him in discussion about school while he squirmed on the couch. It wasn’t until he heard the sizzle of frying oil from the kitchen and smelled the latkes that he remembered—oh, yes, Hanukkah started last night. A holiday about the miracle of lasting light from an inadequate supply of oil, commemorated with foods fried in oil.

He did know the story. The traditionalist Maccabees revolted against the Seleucid Empire, which was denying Jewish people the right to observe their religion and defiling the Temple. He was a smart and inquisitive boy, so he also knew that the primary target of the Maccabean revolt was not the oppressive government, but Hellenistic Jews, whose degree of assimilation into Greek culture was violently offensive to the traditionalists. It was an uncomfortable story if you examined it too closely, especially to him. Who was he if not the modern version of a Hellenistic Jew? He wasn’t even religious (was starting to regard religion broadly as a manipulative waste of time).

The irony, of course, is that Hanukkah is a minor holiday from a religious perspective. The story of the Maccabean revolt isn’t even in the Jewish scriptures, only the Catholic and Orthodox Christian versions. Hanukkah’s increased importance in Jewish life was largely a result of American assimilation and the desire to have a winter holiday to counterbalance Christmas. The Maccabees would not have approved, and Fox thoroughly appreciated the incongruity.

His grandparents, though, celebrated with gentle sincerity. He found that he couldn’t regard their observance with disdain. They didn’t require him to participate, but he sat at the table with his grandmother to watch his grandfather light the candles and listen to the blessings. (He didn’t know the blessings well, and his Hebrew was minimal to nonexistent, but they were very beautiful. He began to wish he was more familiar with them.)

Over the following week, as he sat and watched and listened, he decided that he could understand the appeal of a ceremony like this one. Common traditions and customs, language and food that forged a connection across vast distances and back through time. A way of centering and grounding yourself even when the surrounding world was difficult and scary. A reminder of who you were.

On the eighth day, after the plates from dinner were cleared away, he sat alone and watched the nine candles as they burned at the dining room window overlooking Fifth Avenue. The light reflected enough against the dark outside that he could see his own pensive face staring back at him. His grandfather said that the lights were set in the window to remind any and all passing travelers of the miracle.

Fox didn’t think he still believed in miracles.

~

On the very rare occasion that it comes up he feels like a religious imposter—he really needs an asterisk, like Roger Maris before the steroid era. (The wannabe Nazis who bring it up can get fucked; any dark conspiracies in his family tree run through the Gentile side, thank you very much.) He’s _technically_ Jewish, probably more Jewish than Christian, but he’s not very much of either. It’s a heritage he isn’t quite comfortable with, feels that he has no right to claim.

He relegates Hanukkah in his head to trivial status as a sort of Jewish Christmas. It moves around, so he barely even remembers when it is from year to year, though he has been known to observe Yom Kippur on a very rare occasion. In 1996, with the fresh horror of “nasopharyngeal mass” echoing through his head, he spent all of one Monday in late September seeking atonement. He was too self-conscious to tell Scully where he actually was, so he made up some ridiculous tale about the equinox. (He told HR the truth, cited “religious observance,” and no one ever questioned why he’d suddenly become religiously observant. His direct supervisor could probably guess.)

By the time December had arrived, she was still herself, still ~~his~~ Scully, but even though he had been trying not to, he couldn’t help but notice the increasing effort it cost her. She was growing thinner, paler. Her nosebleeds had become a fact of their joint life; he’d started carrying kleenex with him, along with an old-fashioned handkerchief. She’d stopped trying to disguise her frequent dashes to the bathroom, and she was always cold.

That year he bought her a big fleece blanket for Christmas in an assertively ugly red plaid. He hoped that she would wrap herself up in it, so it could keep her warm or maybe even give her the comforting illusion of safety. His arms by proxy.

(A little over a year later, following the traumatic events of Christmas 1997, Emily found and appropriated the big fleece blanket, a tiny figure in its voluminous warmth.)

~

The year 2000 brought upheaval, though the world didn’t end.

He lost his mother, found his sister. A week after he’d absorbed that blow, he was back at his mother’s house in Connecticut trying to sift through the material remains of a family that had decayed long ago. Scully had invited herself to come with him, and he was deeply grateful—she had always been far better at post-mortems than he was.

He found the menorah in a box in the attic, tucked away among a tangle of Christmas garland. It looked like the one he remembered from his grandparents’ house: the same solid brass and elegant curves. He traced the branches with his fingertips before putting it aside in the small box of heirlooms to keep: family jewelry, photo albums, and a few well-loved toys that had belonged to him or to Samantha.

He expected that he ought to be lonely. His family was gone, after all—definitively _gone_ , not missing or remaining at the detached distance he’d experienced for most of his life. He certainly felt grief; he cried so much that he almost expected the ghost of his father to appear and admonish him to be a man. (Scully simply held him with her gentle sturdiness.) But he never did feel alone.

Arranging his affairs in New England took every weekend for the better part of two months. It was exhausting, but there were bright spots. Every time he and Scully stopped by Maggie’s house to collect Emily on their way back home, Emily would unfailingly gallop out the door in her hurry greet them. She would hug him hard, and he felt at least a little bit rejuvenated.

By Christmastime he’d finally worked out that he still had a family—was an integral member of that family—and he was almost used to the giddy idea of its expansion (which was good, since, ready or not, Scully had entered the third trimester). He was even secure enough in his familial position to accompany Scully and Emily on their holiday visit to Maggie’s house to mingle with extended Scullys. He regretted his bravery a little when he crossed the threshold behind his clearly-pregnant partner, anticipating awkward questions and feeling self-conscious and out-of-place. But Scully held onto his hand firmly and unapologetically, and he made it mostly unscathed through various aunts and uncles and a silently disapproving brother. (He would’ve been willing to endure a far more daunting trial as long as Scully was being so openly possessive of him.)

He somehow wound up going to church that year, accompanying Maggie and Scully and Emily. The first Sunday after Christmas, they all walked up through the doors of an imposingly large building into a lobby that was milling with people, though he supposed their ranks were thinner than last week. He felt even more awkward than he had around the Scully aunts who cast knowing looks at him. On the rare occasion he felt inspired to pray in any sort of sacred space, he gravitated toward small chapels where no one would notice him. He wondered if anyone could tell he was an interloper.

Emily hung determinedly onto his fingers, which helped to ground him. Christmas was still somewhat fraught for her then: He and Scully were very careful about keeping an eye on her and avoiding triggers and ensuring that she felt safe. ( _“My first parents died on Christmas,” she had whispered to Mulder, curled up in a sad ball in the ugly fleece blanket he had once given to Scully. “It’s OK to feel sad,” he had replied. “My sister died on Thanksgiving a really long time ago, and I still feel sad about it sometimes.”)_

Their little group was met in the lobby by a very harried-looking woman.

“Maggie, I know you’re not scheduled to work the nursery until next week, but is there any chance you can help out today? Both the Raymonds and the Hernandezes got the flu over Christmas, and we’re trying to fill their spots, but we’re low on available volunteers.”

He could see Maggie shift on her feet a bit, knew that she was hoping to have this time with her daughter and granddaughter, wondered how much more awkward his presence was making this whole conversation. And so he said, “I can help. If you’d like.”

The woman turned to him, eyebrows raised in surprise. Maggie hurried to introduce, “Denise Taylor, this is Fox Mulder. Fox is... my son-in-law. Dana’s young man.” He supposed the fact that he was standing next to clearly-pregnant Dana with Emily tugging on him would probably make that status evident. But it still made him feel a strange sort of warmth to hear himself so described.

Denise, thankfully, seemed unaware of his inner musings. She gave him an evaluating look, clearly tempted to take the fortuitous assistance. “That’s kind of you, Mr. Mulder, but by policy we’d need you to pass a background check.”

“I’m—uh—an FBI agent, if that helps.” He produced his badge from his pocket, offered a smile. “I’ve passed background checks; the federal government gave me security clearance.”

“Well, if you’re sure... You’re a guest here, and I don’t want to take you away from the service...”

He could have said a number of things then: that he’d attend a later service or that he wasn’t worried about it or even that he didn’t believe at all. What he actually said was, “It’s OK; I really don’t mind. I’m Jewish.” And he had no idea why he’d replied that way when it was something he almost never talked about. (Bless Maggie Scully, he could see her suddenly fretting about the number of times she’d fed him ham.) Maybe being in this space full of reverent families reminded him of those two long-ago weeks he spent with his grandparents.

Denise squinted at him a moment before nodding decisively. Perhaps making unwed Jewish fathers unwelcome was too pointed for this time of year.

And that was how he became the emergency childcare contact at a Catholic church where a bunch of nursery-aged children called him Mr. Fox.

~

These days, if he prays at all, it’s most often to Scully’s God (though, yes, if he’s being religiously technical, they’re the same God). He still has ambivalent feelings about gods writ large, but he does have relentless faith in Scully.

In 2011 Emily finds the menorah. As she’s grown older, she’s become increasingly fascinated by the stories and experiences of her relatives and ancestors. Perhaps she’s inspired by the complexity of her early life, though she exhibits no interest at all in her biological paternity, whatever that is. She knows enough of the facts—her parents refuse to withhold information from her, though they moderate it in an age-appropriate way. Emily is adamant that Mulder is her father, gets her stubborn, fierce loyalty from her mother. For his part, he’s never felt conflicted on that point in the least, though his emotional makeup still makes him powerfully grateful to be so loved.

His heritage and family, then, is another avenue that Emily is eager to explore. She’s far more curious about it than he has ever been. Though Scully occasionally intervenes if the delving becomes too painful for him, Emily’s interest inspires a connection somewhere inside him. He’s surprised to find that telling her about his life usually doesn’t hurt very much.

So when Emily finds the menorah, she wants to know about it, and he tells her the story of his holiday visit to his grandparents back in 1976. Will drifts in, then Scully, and Mulder finds himself telling other stories about his grandparents, too: his grandfather’s scholarship and his grandmother’s philanthropy and how much they both loved their cats (how much they loved him and Samantha). He’d never even thought to tell Scully most of these stories, and she’s as enraptured as their children.

When Emily declares that they should light the menorah this year, he hesitates a bit. “I don’t actually know the prayers, Em.” (He doesn’t know how to do this properly, wonders if doing it _wrong_ would disrespect the memory of his grandparents.)

She scoffs. “There’s the _internet_ , Dad.” She’s a millennial, their daughter. She looks up directions for the ceremony and finds recordings of the blessings on YouTube.

And so they have their own little Hanukkah observance. He reconsiders the holiday. There is, of course, still inherent irony in honoring traditionalists with a celebration that eases assimilation. But the meaning of something doesn’t belong solely to its creator. The multitude of intervening generations have a say, and holidays are part of a richly symbolic tapestry, to which successive populations and individuals add and enrich. Connected to the past, but still evolving.

He stands at the window, and the lights reflect against the darkness. He can see his own face looking back at him, alongside the faces of his family. His daughter, his son, his wife. Living miracles.

**Author's Note:**

> I really, really try to keep this series G-rated. But the Nazis deserved the F-word, and I couldn't bring myself to take it out.


End file.
